Secrets Buried In a Sales Person's Resume

By Lee B. Salz

The
vehicle that introduces sales people to companies is a resume, but
there are secrets hidden in the resume that hiring managers should
know before they interview a candidate.

In my
sales management career, I would bet that I've seen about 5,000
resumes for sales people. Yet, I still haven't seen one that shows
someone who has achieved 40% of quota. Every single resume shows
100%, 200%, 2,000,000% of goal. Where are all of the people who have
had less than stellar sales performances? Did they all leave the
sales profession? If all of the resumes that I saw truly represented
the performance of the individual, the U.S. economy would be
thriving to say the least. Every company would be enjoying record
revenue performances.

If you
have read my past articles, you've felt my passion for creating
sales marriages, those relationships whereby a mutually beneficial
relationship is formulated between a sales professional and a
company based on synergistic matches of needs. This is not easy to
do as, right off the bat, the relationship begins with a flawed
tool, a resume. It is this tool that dupes, tricks, and stretches
the truth of a person's pedigree. Yet, as an employer, that is what
you have to work with when hiring a sales professional so you need
to find a way to mine through the information in a quest for the
complete truth.

I spend
a tremendous amount of time preaching about the importance of
honesty and integrity in sales. Those are two words that are not
often associated with the profession. As such, I believe that the
quest to find sales people who represent a company's brand well
starts with a thorough resume review. Plain and simple, dishonesty
in a sales person's resume means they don't play on my team. There
are more than enough statistics to support the issue of what I call
"resume inflation."

I can
recall a time when I ran a sales organization in the employment
screening industry, a company that provided pre-employment
background screening for other companies. We made an offer to a
sales candidate who had impressed everyone he met including the CEO.
When we ran his background check, our core business, we found that
his claim to have worked for a company for two and a half years was
actually two and a half months. The funny part is when we asked him
about the discrepancy, he lied again and said his former employer
made a mistake. Fifteen minutes later, he called back (I think he
remembered that background screening was our core business) and
fessed up. Needless to say, we couldn't have this person selling our
background screening services.

Think
about this, if someone would apply for a sales job at a company
whose core business was employment background screening and lie
about their background, what candidates do you think you are seeing?
Every day, new technologies are introduced to the marketplace to
make the screening process better and easier for hiring managers.
Yet, none of these technology companies advocate using their
technology as a replacement for a strong screening process.
Assessments, for example, serve as a tool for the process, but do
not replace the process itself. Thus, it all begins with a strong
resume review.

The
resume review should not occur for the first time with the candidate
sitting in front of you. An effective interview requires
preparation. As such, theresume
should be studied and areas of question identified so that questions
can be asked of the candidate during the interview. What areas
should be perused? Here are five areas of a sales resume that
require detailed attention.

Accomplishments. In sales, there is an old expression that says
if you can't prove it, don't say it. This usually refers to the
dialogue between a sales person and a prospect, but it is also
applicable for a resume. As a hiring manager, you are well within
your rights to ask candidates for documentation of the
accomplishments they list on their resume. If they don't have
documentation, perhaps a request for a reference for that
accomplishment is appropriate. Checking every single accomplishment
is over the top, but checking one or two accomplishments makes
sense. I suggest those that seem the most impressive to you about
the candidate be verified. If someone told me that they personally
doubled the size of the company in one year, I would want to see
proof of that!

Title. Sales people have more titles than there are prospects in
the world. I can't keep track of all of them any more. However,
those titles don't necessarily correspond to responsibility. A small
company may call their only sales person a Vice President while a
large company may call a person performing the exact same role a
sales representative. While reviewing the resume, don't limit your
perusal to the title. Dig a bit into the responsibilities that the
individual had. During the interview process, it is critical that
you ask questions to understand the role and responsibility that
goes with the title.

Where
some companies get in trouble is they look to hire a senior sales
person and don't consider candidates with higher level (Vice
President, for example) titles. It is important to analyze the
responsibilities that the individual had in their capacity to see if
this individual matches your needs regardless of what you call this
role. If the resume is unclear about this, ask the candidate for
details.

Employer dates. If a sales person has a gap, or gaps, in their
employment meaning they did not leave one job and go directly to
another one, they will show years of employment, but not months.
This creates the illusion of continuous employment. If you
background screen as part of your hiring process and employment
verification is part of that scope, this will be identified at that
time. However, that takes time and dollars. (If you haven't seen my
white paper titled, "Are There Criminals On Your Sales Team?"
send me an email for your copy.) But, why wait until the end of the
process to learn something you can know now? When you see years on a
resume, ask the candidate to provide months of employment too. Ask
questions to understand the gaps. You may still elect to hire the
person, based on the explanation. At least, you get the complete
picture.

Training programs. Many sales people list the training programs
that they have completed on their resume, but who verifies that?
Guess what, no one does! When hiring IT professionals, it is common
to check training and certification completion. Not so, with sales
people. So, what risk does a sales person have by stating that they
have completed the "Miller-Heiman Strategic Selling" course on their
resume? None! A suggestion is to ask for a copy of their completion
certificate. If they have truly taken the course, you will see a
confident reaction. If they have only read the book, or perhaps, not
even that, you will see them squirm in their seat.

College Degree. When I look at the education section of a
resume, I expect to see college name, degree completed, and
graduation date. However, I regularly see that degree or graduation
date, or both are omitted. Red flag! Sure, a background check will
expose that too, but why wait until post-offer to find out? When you
see missing information on the resume, ask the candidate
point-blank, if they graduated college, what year, and with what
major? Some omit their graduation year to hide their age, but others
do it to create the illusion of degree completion. Unfortunately,
you will find many sales people who list a college and year, and
hope you won't ask any other questions.

I don't
believe that most sales people intend to dupe their potential
employer, but I've also been around the block long enough to know
that the percentage that "inflate" is high enough to warrant a
circumspect analysis of the resume.